Doping

The Daily Mail is a rag but Matt Lawton is a respected journalist (Sports Journalist Of The Year) and I would bet on him keeping meticulous records of his interviews. On the record or off the record, if he's lying about Brailsford, and that's a big accusation (whether it's DB willing to lie about another team or withholding information from WADA regarding another team's doping) then DB can take the appropriate legal action. But he won't, will he?

And, by your logic, are Murdoch owned media outlets fairly reporting the story? Or reporting it at all?

Sky blew any trust they had from me out the water with Leinders and their ever changing story.

If you still believe it and you still believe in Sky, then that's great. I hope they don't let you down but they've let me down already and they're in the same box as Santa and the Easter Bunny now.

It's elite professional sport, anyone who places trust in athletes and teams who participate in it is away with the fairies.

The issue I have here is that all sorts of accusations are being made without any real evidence. The usual suspects want this to the UK version of the USPS/Tailwind sports debacle, but there is no evidence that backs this up.

Sky have handled the whole thing terribly, but it's well established that for a team representing a media company, they are consistently bloody awful at PR.

I should add - I don't care how respected Matt Lawton is, he works for a fascist rag and deserves contempt.

The BBC sum up the questions pretty well. The relevance of some have been covered here, some I think are still genuine questions.

@andyp You seem very keen for everyone to stop talking about this subject but do you not agree that it is these kind of discussions which will drive the sport to being cleaner, more transparent and generally better for all involved (competitors and fans)?

We hold cyclists, particularly those of our domestic world tour team, to the highest account. They ask us to believe in them, believe they are clean, but then cannot explain, or struggle to explain some pretty basic questions around how they have conducted themselves. Do you not think this is worthy of debate?

From the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/38379953

But questions remain:
◾Why has it taken so long for organisations that claim to be committed to transparency and accountability to get here?
◾The Daily Mail now reports that Brailsford tried to persuade them not to run the Jiffy bag story. Why go to such efforts when it merely contained a decongestant?
◾Will British Cycling or Team Sky now be able to provide a paper trail to back up the Fluimucil explanation?
◾Why was British Cycling president Bob Howden still unable to say what was in the jiffy bag months after the story broke, only for Brailsford to then reveal it?
◾Why were Brailsford's original explanations about the delivery not correct when all he had to do was ask former team medic Dr Richard Freeman?
◾Why send for a routine, innocuous drug from over 1,000 kilometres away when it could have been easily sourced in France?
◾Why did former coach Shane Sutton "authorise" the delivery of something, the details of which he claims not to be aware of? And why did Wiggins' long-term mentor not know what medication his star cyclist was taking?
◾And why was Wiggins taking a decongestant that apparently is not meant to be used by asthmatics (like him)?

Sadly for Team Sky and British Cycling, despite the belated clarity, for many critics the sense of suspicion will linger beyond today.

◾Why send for a routine, innocuous drug from over 1,000 kilometres away when it could have been easily sourced in France?

Because that would be stupid.

I think we're coming at it from generally the same angle.

At every turn there's more questions to be answered though. I don't think it's unreasonable, in the pursuit of clean sport, for people at the highest level to be required to explain themselves satisfactorily when it comes to anti-doping questions.

For a team apparently so meticulous, to be in this situation is laughable if they've done nothing wrong and I find it hard to believe that with such a focus on details, they're stuttering and mumbling through this for months as if they can't remember.

And, with Sky, most people are only holding them to the standards they set for themselves. They claimed zero tolerance, transparency and clean sport and we're in a situation where they've been caught out in the darkest of grey areas on many occasions.

There's only so many times I'm prepared to hear Brailsford say 'we made a mistake, we've learned from this and we're moving on.' It's also the damage it could be doing to British Cycling which is unfair to those riders.

This story is hilarious, 'Acetylcysteine isn't even licenced in the UK', you can literally find it in the drug cupboards of 50% of hospital wards. Doctors prescribe medication despite contra-indications all the time, assuming the patient can be monitored appropriately.
Conversely, what do people think was in the package? Were they about to give in competition EPO?!

Wasn't the race over? What would have been the point of EPO then? If it's not what they claim it is then surely it would be something to aid recovery.

Yep kids, @gav has all your hot sauce needs covered. PM'd

Probably shouldn't mention I work in Haematology right?

Lawton going full Kimmage. That ended well.

Journalists didn't bring down Lance, it was team mates.

You seem very keen for everyone to stop talking about this subject but do you not agree that it is these kind of discussions which will drive the sport to being cleaner, more transparent and generally better for all involved (competitors and fans)?

Where have I said people should stop talking about this? The point remains that, as yet, not one single piece of evidence that suggests any wrongdoing has come to light.

As for this type of discussion making the sport more transparent, I'd argue that it has the opposite effect - if a team that claims it has nothing to hide is subjected to this level of scrutiny whilst teams with known issues escape scrutiny completely, I cannot see how this will improve 'transparency'. Riders are already subjected to a tremendous amount of scrutiny, having to record their daily whereabouts, have regular blood and urine tests outside of competition and have in competition tests. How much further is it fair to go? Does publishing your private medical data not seem a step too far to you?

This whole issue of 'openness and transparency' is one of those concepts that means different things to different people and, generally, will never satisfy the diehards who, having been burnt by their belief in Armstrong, now think that anyone who wins a bike race must be doped to the gills. For a fair sport, all teams should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny and transparency, there should not be disparity because of the country your team is based in.

Sky's meticulous 'marginal gains' guff is PR for the sponsors and the once a year cycling fans waving little Union Jacks at th side of the road, tuning in to watch Froomey spank the forrins as he rides around France. What is has become is an unfortunate rod for their own back.

Every team, every rider, every DS, every team manager claims they ride clean. Maybe we don't notice it as much because they are not British and their press releases aren't always in English but it is there and a quick google search will reveal it. There are many teams out there run by convicted dopers, OBE for example, yet they don't warrant nearly the scrutiny Sky do, and you have to ask yourself why. Because they win the TdF? Because they hold themselves to higher standards, and people expect them to be whiter than white? Because they are from a non-traditional cycling country and ride in a dominant, boring way? Because of Wiggins calling everyone wankers in 2012? Because well, Froome?

All of the above, and beyond that the malign shadow of Armstrong looming above the sport and poisoning everything in the sport it falls upon. I am certain Sky are not USPS revisited, as much as some are so desperate for them to be. And that is something I find pervades the scrutiny on Sky: people want them to be dopers, they want them to be Armstrong mk. 2, they are desperate to pull Sky off the pedestal and draw them into the mire the sport has repeatedly found itself in. And until the TUEs and now the Jiffy bag they have had nothing to pin on Sky beyond performance. No whistle-blowers, no sick bed confessions, no positives, nada. Just innuendo and bad maths. And so the teeth continue to gnash away on Twitter and by the side of the road.

If you want a whiter than white team look away, Sky I am certain push the limits, but I am also sure there isn't the sort of institutionalised cheating we have seen before.

Tl:dr on a train, went into a rant, probably wrong. Don't break my heart Geraint.

Fair enough points all round. However Froome and Wiggins are not on the same level of anyone from OBE. If you look at Wiggins in particular this is a chap who is our most decorated Olympian, a multi discipline world champion, tour winner and now a knight of the realm. In terms of success he is on a similar level to Lance.
As soon as he lied in his book about the injections, everyone was suspicious and rightly so. The whole saga has been managed appallingly, but that makes you more suspicious. If there was nothing to cover up, why was it so difficult to manage? Also, as a result of all this, I expect the TUE system will be improved and tightened, so some good has come of it, even if "no rules were broken". Hopefully it has made the rules "better".

Also -

Don't break my heart Geraint.

This.

OBE may not be winning the TdF but they've been winning monuments, one-day races and stages in the TdF from the get-go. They have been extremely successful but simply don't receive the same teeth-grinding aggression that Sky do from corners of Twitter. And now they are developing into a GT team with the Yates bro's and Chaves, but they seem to get a mostly free pass.

As far as Wiggins goes, 3 TUEs in how long a career? Did he win any of his Olympic medals with a TUE? He's been a world-class athlete throughout his career, mayhap they pushed the limits to get him the TdF win, but he didn't have a TUE in 2009 when with Garmin when coming third, unless you think Vaughters and Millar ran a dirty team and were doping him back then. He was winning stage races before he had the TUE in 2011, 2012 and 2013. I've said before allergies are an utter arse and if they affected him badly in 2010 when he was poor in the TdF I can see why they went down the TUE route. Was it an abuse of the system? Maybe, but then that is a fault of the system.

No TUEs for his hour record, ITT world champs, recent track achievements. I don't think they should over shadow his entire career. Unless you are of the opinion that they are the tip of the iceberg and he's been doping his entire career, just like his Da.

Look, I don't think he's been doped to gizzards his entire career. However, we're trying to make what was once probably the dirtiest sport for doping into the cleanest.
To get there, this is all part of the process in my opinion. Great strides have been made, but people are still getting popped for doping now. It's not gone away. I do worry that the ability to go back and re-test samples when the tests get better is going to find more and more stuff even as we go forward. Just look at the mess that is the 2012 Olympics.

I also agree that it appears he's not broken any rules. However I still come back to his book. Why lie?

On OBE being a decent team, I don't dismiss this. Most of the world tour teams have been pretty good at some point in the last 5 years. However, since Lance you've got a handful of cycling superstars, of which Froome and Wiggins are two. They ride for the team which bleats the most about being transparent and super clean, but then mess up when put under even mild scrutiny.

It's also not irrelevant that Team Sky and British Cycling are so closely related. This makes Sky as close to a state sponsored team as any "private" professional team out there. As such, taxpayers and lottery players who help fund this relationship are allowed to hold them to account IMO.

I suppose if you were confident that you are running a clean team you might not spend much time worrying about how to spin things, whether innocent decisions might look a bit weird with the benefit of hindsight etc... Looks pretty naive now if this is the case

And now they are developing into a GT team with the Yates bro's and Chaves, but they seem to get a mostly free pass.

Can you imagine the furore if Sky signed Kreuziger?

What I was driving it is there are double standards being applied, there is an inherent bias amongst cycling fans and the cycling press against them. Like USPS they came from a non-traditional cycling country and quickly dominated the sport, or at least the sport's blue ribbon event. And fans and commentators didn't like it, arrogant, upstart Brits with their talk of zero-tolerance, of being clean and marginal gains. You read the comments at the clinic and see a pattern of resentment towards 'anglophone' countries and riders: US, Australia, Britain and even Germany get lumped together at being anglo and Northern European and are set against Southern and even Eastern-European riders, the later held up as plucky, from poor backgrounds who only dope as a last resort. They are the good dopers, set against the merciless, monied efficiency of the bad dopers, us, the Yanks, the Germans or the bad dopers, in their eyes. A case in point would be when the clinic en masse attacked Kittel for being racist and bullying when he called out Sayar on Twitter as a doper when he won the Tour of Turkey, then was subsequently popped a couple of months later. The narrative created their was of a plucky rider from a small country and from a small team being bullied by the Anglos and Germans, and the questions asked of Kittel weren't praising him for breaking omerta, but instead saying why isn't he calling out Wiggins or Sky.

These people don't really want a clean sport, they aren't truly anti-doping. Italian, Spanish, Russian etc dopers are given an easy ride, instead they just want to see Sky burn, and the old order of riders from traditional cycling countries winning again. It is a truly strange agenda, but if you call them out on it you are derided as a 'skybot' or fanboy, a bit like the Trump trolls infesting Reddit with their cries of cucks and libtards.

Look at the way Kimmage time after time tears into Sky, in between tweets lauding the Irish rugby team, whose shape and size and speed are most likely the result of PEDs (rugby is particularly rife), or fanboy tweets over football, another sport with a huge PED problem that is mostly ignored. But he knows anti-Sky tweets are what grab the attention, and he can plug into the clinic narrative easily and get the trolls all riled up. The unfortunate thing is this antipathy spreads to the roadside, Sky riders are going to get hammered in the Tour, again.

Sorry, went off on a tangent. I suppose those double-standards infuriate the sense of justice in me so while I agree Sky and Wiggins have questions to answer, the witch hunt against them is disproportionate to what is actually going one. 3 TUEs for Wiggins, 2 for Froome, a jiffy bag, inconsistent answers, that is the sum of accusations against them. Compare that to OBE with convicted dopers running the team and, as @andyp points out, hiring a rider who only narrowly avoided action for some very sketchy blood values.

Nothing against OBE, just a convenient example of a similar team that doesn't invite nearly the sort of scrutiny and vitriol Sky do.

Tl:dr anti-clinic/Kimmage rant, Geraint don't let me down. Stannard, you too.

^ would rep

Great points well made.

I still think it is only natural that this British forum and British Press ask exacting questions of and debate a British sporting hero with questions to answer. Mo Farah/Paula Radcliffe have hardly had an easy ride over doping suspicion so it's not something just limited to cycling. The fact remains that BW is about as big as it comes in terms of British sporting stars, regardless of sporting discipline, and this drives much of debate.

On your points regarding rugby and football, I have no doubt that doping is rife here, as I imagine across the sporting spectrum. Personally, as a fan, I care less in these sports as there is a pleasure in watching for the skill and spectacle alone. A beautiful cross, some swift hands in the back line etc. As such, the doping bothers me, as a fan, less. I can still enjoy a game of football even if I think some of them juiced.

With cycling, it's different . While there is some skill involved it is not on the same level, particularly for a climber. What it is really about is fitness, which is where doping makes all the difference. This is why there is more of a clamour to fix cycling and athletics than the team sports which require immense skill to get to a high level in the first place. The winners still won because they scored more goals, not just because they could run further for longer (though that will help) there is still enjoyment from the spectacle.

Well said!

With all this chat about Sky I've nearly forgotten about Russia.

I'm not of the opinion that Brailsford says we are clean and we slap him on the back and say carry on old chap, but the TUE controversy and now the jiffy bag lead people to extrapolate that Wiggins is a doper and has been throughout his career, that Sky has some sort of institutionalised doping regime like USPS or Festina and all their blackshirts are on the juice, and that British cycling by logical extension is infested in the same manner. And that their doping is somehow worse than some Italian riders getting pinged, demonised like Armstrong rather than ignored like Pantani. Those double standards wind me up.

I do think it's a dangerous slope saying that doping in endurance sports is somehow worse than in team/skill sports. Yes you have to be skillful to play rugby and football, but it sure as hell helps if you are built like a brick shithouse and can run for full gas for 80/90 minutes. Rugby has the highest number of positives of any sport in the UK, and football is so poorly policed it is scandalous. Cycling has long been the tethered goat for sports, constant doping scandals that make it look like a cesspool and distract from other sports who look like a paragon of virtue in comparison. But those scandals exist because it is very heavily policed as a sport, whereas other sports you can virtually dope with impunity.

Tl:dr said sport a lot

Describing Team Sky as meticulous is lolz.

I also described it as PR guff

Cycling tips has been poor recently; however this article is good.

https://cyclingtips.com/2016/12/commentary-team-sky-has-a-history-of-credibility-issues-with-dave-brailsford-at-centre-stage/